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‘San Juan’
Engrossed in ‘The Commanders – Cromwell’, Kendall is startled by a knock at the door. Paul and Liz are half an hour early. As they fetch supplies from the car, Kendall hastily calls Dicken, urging him to join forces with all due speed. Meanwhile. Kendall switches channel to ‘Friends’ (that’ll keep ‘em occupied) and small talks with Liz about cats. Tao (cat 1) has had his castration op’ today – Flint (cat 2) must wait because of his dicky heart (shame). Tao seems non-too-bothered, but it is disquieting to see him on hind legs playing with the billiard balls in the pockets of the snooker table.
Dicken arrives remarkably promptly and disappears in order to put another wash in Kendall’s machine. The saga of the house extension continues.
It’s a long while since Paul and Liz last visited, but they are in excellent form as usual. ‘San Juan’ is on the menu tonight along with Doritos and humous, washed down with copious amounts of beer – and that’s just Liz. The rules are quickly explained by Dicken. So quickly that Kendall feels obliged to do them properly from the rule book. This is also completed in a couple of sentences, much to Kendall’s amazement – after all there must be a dozen pages to go at. There is a reason ….
‘San Juan’ is the baby brother of ‘Puerto Rico’. Whilst PR is a boardgame, SJ is a card game. However there are very many similarities between the two and Paul and Liz are fairly expert with PR. They instantly recognise the significance of ‘The Governor’, ‘The Builder’, ‘The Producer’, ‘The Trader’ and ‘The Prospector’. For those of you reading who don’t, simply read up the ‘Puerto Rico’ review on this site.
Only ‘The Councillor’ is a newcomer, and his role is simply to generate cards. Liz is a little put-out to find ‘The Captain’ is missing from SJ, apparently a favourite of hers.
The big differences between the two games is that money is replaced by cards for transactions and there are no workers in SJ. Cards are everything – in fact the only other component is a score pad ( enough sheets to play a hundred times!).
Everyone starts with an Indigo production card (already built on table) and four cards dealt from the pack. Kendall, ‘The Governor’ goes first. He chooses ‘The Builder’ and builds a Smithy. The Smithy is one of his four cards. It normally costs 2 to build, but because Kendall is ‘The Builder’ this reduces to 1. This ‘1’ is any other card from his hand, which is then played onto the discard pile. As it happens, no-one else can afford to build just yet, so the turn passes to Dicken.
Dicken chooses the ‘Prospector’ a pragmatic choice as it benefits only Dicken. He gets a card and the rest of the players get nothing. Liz produces with the ‘Producer’ and so does everyone else, placing a card from the hand onto their respective Indigo production cards. For some reason best known to himself, Dicken asks for a rule check. By some sixth sense he has uncovered a mistake in our play (and SJ was played a number of time at Spiller’s bash); the production card should have been taken from the supply deck. The ramification is that the game will now have more pace.
Finally Paul elects to become ‘Councillor’; a role he makes his own throughout the rest of the evening. He gets to draw five cards; choosing and keeping any one. All other players get a choice of two.
End of the round, jobs back to the middle, new Governor.
‘Trader’ is the one job not yet used. A neat system in which each player sells a good, and draws cards at a variable rate indicated on a card chit. As usual the person taking the job gets a ‘privilege’.
There are just two types of card; ‘Production’ and ‘Violet’. There are five different Productions, with Indigo being the cheapest to buy (1) and Silver the most expensive (5). Silver earns more when traded. The Violet cards are buildings and sit very familiarly with the buildings in PR, except that not many are the same! Most of them give a benefit to the jobs (e.g. Aqueduct). Some of them help with card storage (e.g. Tower). A fair few are simply for Victory Points (Monuments). There are lots of instructions pertaining to these, but Paul and Liz pick it up as they go along and seem to relish each new permutation.
The phone rings. It’s Phil – who’d have guessed. He reports encouraging sales of ‘Backpacks’ in the Lake District.
All too soon Dicken is completing his 12th building, which means the game will end. What is more, Dicken has romped home with 37 points courtesy of two of the ‘6’ point violet buildings. These are the variable earners akin to the ‘Guildhall’ in PR.
Kendall is second, Liz third and Paul (the ‘Councillor’) some way behind in last place.
9.30. ‘Time for another one?’ suggest Paul and Liz! And so a second game gets underway.
Some little time later ….. Kendall wins with 31 points, Liz second with 30 points, Dicken on 28 points and Paul on 27 points. Very pleasing; very pleasant.
How does it compare with its eminent predecessor?
Well the jury feels …it is… in fact… superior ! (Shock! Horror!). How? Why?
Well, PR introduces a superb mechanism in the way everyone chooses a job, but everyone gets to do it. That is retained in SJ and it still drives the game. Much of the rest of PR is quite mechanical i.e. you choose to buy this, you choose to produce that. Now some players will like that control, but to others (including this group) that level of control is fine if you’re winning, but frustrating if you’re behind. Playing catch up is all very well if your chances of catching up are sufficient to good
In SJ the randomising through drawing cards means you’ve always got a chance of either moving forward fortuitously or (more likely) someone else NOT getting the rub of the green and therefore moving backwards. However, the luck element is only half the story, as decisions have to be made throughout the game on which card to play and which to throw away.
Finally, the balance of what the buildings cost, do, and are worth, feels better in SJ than in PR. Some buildings in PR are too powerful and others too weak. One senses that the designers of San Juan have worked hard to eradicate that criticism in this later offering.
Paul enthuses about his garage. He’s got two bits of board and there’s room for a table-top war-game. A Saturday before Christmas is pencilled in and e-mail addresses are exchanged. Paul starts talking about army lists; Liz drags him away.
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